Outdoor Learning

Our Himalayan Location Is The Perfect Classroom

It provides authentic learning circumstances that challenge students beyond the four walls of a school.

It is a stimulus for learning, a way to bring academic subject areas to life while offering physical challenges that promote personal and social growth.

Through both academic outdoor learning and extended expeditions, Woodstock students develop lasting relationships with the natural world, while building resilience and leadership. The outdoors is an abundant educational resource that is a highly valued element of the Woodstock experience.

Activity Week

‘Never let your schooling stand in the way of your education.’ Mark Twain

Activity Week is exploring frescoes in a thirteenth-century Jain cave, roping up to cross a glacier, rafting the white waters of the upper Ganges, helping village kids prepare for their school’s first-ever sports meet. Activity Week is cycling through the Doon Valley, playing with blind children, teaching in a slum school in Delhi, helping the cook at a dhaba make chappatis, exploring Mussoorie.

Activity Week is not sitting in a classroom, taking notes or studying for tests, but it is one of the best learning experiences Woodstock students have. Every October, for one week, teachers and students from Kindergarten to Grade 12 head off-campus to explore India, travelling to destinations as nearby as Mussoorie, as far away as Varanasi and Dharamsala.

Students vary their Activity Weeks; over time they participate in a full range of hiking, cultural, service and environmental activities. By Grade 12 they’re ready to organise their own activity. Woodstock’s Activity Week is the stuff of which life is made – learning, discovery, friendship, challenge, service, responsibility, adventure.

The Hanifl Centre

Outdoor Education in the Himalaya

The Hanifl Centre staff work alongside the teaching community to support experiential and outdoor learning across the curriculum. It transmits an appreciation and understanding of the Himalayan environment. Schools, colleges and universities from around the world visit for semester-long programmes.